


A Crucial Ingredient

by aldiara



Category: Alles was zaehlt
Genre: Alles was zählt - Freeform, Angst, M/M, Post-Threesome, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:44:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without Jenny, it's too easy for Roman and Lars to remember that they don't really like each other, that they have next to nothing in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Crucial Ingredient

The thing is, without Jenny, it doesn’t bleeding work.

Roman and Lars try, for a while. It seems the thing to do. They share a flat; it is convenient. Convenient to have someone else’s room to sneak into, someone else’s body to lose yourself in. Convenient to not be alone. And after all, why shouldn’t they? Jenny and Lars broke up. It needn’t affect the two of them, and anyway, Lars reasons, this is slightly more normal than what they were doing before, right? Slightly.

“Oh yeah?” asks Roman, sneering. “Threesome trumps gay, in your orderly little hierarchy of perversion?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lars says, not teasing, and roughly pulls him close, and then things are alright, for an hour or two.

  
Except they’re not. The balance is off, the pieces don’t align; a crucial ingredient is missing, and its name is Jenny Steinkamp. They’ve always known that she was their bonding agent, but this is the first time they find out just how precarious their own threads of connection are.

It’s an odd thought that such an abrasive woman could have had any softness to spare, let alone enough to provide for three, but somehow it seems she did. Without Jenny, it’s too easy for Roman and Lars to remember that they don’t really like each other, that they have next to nothing in common. Without her, Roman’s teasing turns to cutting cynicism, and Lars’s mouth curls into grimaces but never smiles. Without her, they are all angles and edges, poking and nudging each other uncomfortably in all the places where Jenny’s soft curves and slender limbs used to fit.

Roman finds it amusing that he even misses her in bed. For one thing, they laughed when she was around. They teased and fumbled and cracked up over logistics and positioning. One minute, they’d whack each other with pillows, and the next they’d grow still, looking at each other, dark eyes to blue to hazel; and suddenly they’d move with perfect grace – dancers, all three of them, with no need for choreography.

True, there were things that were strange: Jenny’s small, firm breasts, nipples the colour of wine when she was aroused; the odd, slippery sensation of her moving against him, around him. Her hair, soft and silky as it slid over both their skins; her hands firm and soft at the same time when she wanked them both, a wicked smile playing around the corners of her mouth. It was so weird, when he stopped to think about it, considering that he wasn’t really into her, and Lars wasn’t really into him, and somehow this whole thing should never have worked, but it did, and the thing is, he never _did_ stop to think about it while it was going on, because it was that good.

Now that she’s gone, sex has, absurdly, become awkward, when surely it should be that much easier, technically speaking. At first, it’s still good, because let’s face it, an orgasm is an orgasm, and they do have the hang of _that_ , after five months. But the getting there is becoming more difficult, because without Jenny, Lars remembers that he’s not really into guys, and Roman gets annoyed with him for refusing to bottom. Without Jenny, the mechanics get rougher and lose their finesse. Out of spite, they no longer bother with the things they’ve learned the other likes: Roman no longer nibbles on Lars’s ear or licks little circles on his belly, and Lars no longer ruffles his hair or draws thoughtful little sketches on the skin of his back with his fingers. When they kiss, it’s all teeth and lashing tongues, struggling for dominance. Roman grows resentful at Lars for having the physical advantage, and Lars tries to hide his annoyance at his own lack of experience by being more aggressive, more demanding. There’s no more teasing, no more pillow fights. Certainly no cuddling, after. What little affection they had for each other seems just… gone. With her.

It doesn’t help that Jenny’s not even there to talk to. She’s packed her bags and gone on tour, leaving them to pick up their own pieces. Dropping pair-skating, dropping the three of them, ripping a hole into the odd, but working synergy that they had going.

The strange thing is that Roman would be okay, completely so. He’s not in love with Jenny, after all; he loves her, of course, but that’s different. Jenny, in and of herself, is not a necessity to him; she’s not impossible to live without, and he knows that he will never lose her as a friend.

It’s the addition of another – someone who obviously _can’t_ do without Jenny – that suddenly makes Roman flounder without her as well, and as ever, he finds someone else’s misery an irresistible cause. Roman knows that he himself is utterly breakable but as utterly capable of patching himself back together; and without Jenny, he’s beginning to see that Lars doesn’t have that same capability. For all his bulk and lean strength, Lars is so brittle that he cracks at the slightest rattle, and Roman can say all the right things, can even say them the same way Jenny would, and it never works.

The bitch of it, of course, is that he can’t seem to stop trying.

  
When Lars comes home reeking of alcohol the first time, they have a yelling match about it that even draws Nina out of her room, looking sleepy-eyed and distraught. After they’ve reassured her, they take it down a notch, just lots of hissed accusations of _“What the hell is that going to help?”_ and _“None of your fucking business, Roman, okay?”_

And it starts innocently enough, just Roman poking his finger into Lars’s chest and stating, “I can’t believe even you’d be that stupid!” Lars spits an insult back and shoves his shoulder, just lightly, but Roman immediately shoves back, and within seconds, they’re pushing and growling at each other like a pair of angry dogs. When Lars tries to kiss him, Roman bites his lip so hard that he tastes blood. After some more heated tussling, Lars physically picks him up and slams him against the wall behind him, and something short-circuits inside Roman, then: a brief memory of Deniz in the locker room, hard tiles against his back and Deniz’s imploring eyes before him, saying _Save me, please save me_ , and Roman had no clue what from; and now fucking Lars is looking at him the same fucking way, all helpless and angry, and Roman just loses it, because why the hell does this always happen to him?

“I fucking can’t, okay?” he hisses into Lars’s face, which darkens immediately, although Lars has no idea what he’s talking about, of course. His hands tighten painfully on Roman’s hips, though, and Roman grabs his hair and pulls back his head; latches onto his neck like a vampire, and then everything goes a bit hazy, goes a bit crazy, goes a bit wild.

They wake up sticky, bruises and bites all over; they both smell of vodka and cold come, and Roman feels like he’s going to puke. “That’s it,” he says brusquely, groping for his clothes. “Fuck yourself up, I don’t care, we’re done.”

  
But of course they’re not. Like Lars and his vodka, Roman is addiction-prone, and being needed is better than nothing, or so his stupid mind seems to think. Sometimes Lars stumbles into his room sodden and crying, and Roman tries to hold him, but that doesn’t work either – his compassion’s not real, and Lars’s contrition never lasts, and in the end they only have the stale comfort of a clumsy fuck to give each other. And what was special with Jenny wrapped around them both – what was fun, and light-hearted, and strangely soothing – turns sordid without her to keep the balance between.

Roman almost prefers the other times… those times when Lars comes in belligerent and red-eyed, scowling and gagging for a fight that Roman’s only too happy to give him. And initially, it’s just like that first time – the yelling, the shoving, just heated provocation that soon fuels into passion, and okay, there’s marks to show for it, more than he’s used to, but that’s alright, because it’s to be expected.

When that night comes, the night it goes farther, Roman isn’t even surprised. Perhaps part of him saw it coming; he may be an idiot, but he’s not blind. He knows the signs from his father. They were just doing their usual prowl and slice: lashing out to hurt each other, because without Jenny, they’ve lost the art of comfort; because Roman is tired of being gentle, and Lars doesn’t know how to be, with him.

They’re in Lars’s room, where Roman has stalked him, furious and disgusted by the smell of Lars, the self-righteous, self-pitying slur of his voice and the haunted disorientation of his gaze.

“You’re such a sad fucking loser right now, can’t you see that?” he snarls into Lars’s face, which twitches. Lars’s lips draw back from his teeth; his fist comes up as if without his own volition, clenched and drawn back.

Roman laughs. “Oh, is that next? Go ahead! Do you really think it would be the first time?”

He doesn’t know whether he meant to shame Lars into withdrawal or provoke the blow to fall. The next thing he knows, he’s on the floor with a sore jaw, and his head is literally ringing. Above him looms the blurry shape of Lars, and suddenly he’s all that Roman’s ever hated: brute force, fear given flesh and wide shoulders and might without thinking, always so ready to lash out against the unknown, and the unknown is always him. He shouts something wordless and kicks out against Lars’s shin, so hard that Lars bellows in pain, collapsing. Next thing it’s Nina again, banging on the door and yelling worriedly, and they spend the rest of the evening trying to calm her down and convince her not to call the police.

The next day, while Nina’s at work, Lars comes, bleary-eyed, to apologise, and the sight of him sends Roman into a massive rage. They end up shouting at each other in the kitchen, and when Roman storms past Lars, Lars grabs his shoulder and flings him around; there’s a second where they stare at each other heatedly, then Roman feels his mouth distort into a ferocious grin and he challenges, in a low voice, “Go on then, you fucking coward.”

For a second, he thinks Lars will do it, even sober. His eyes are wild and stormy and his wide shoulders so tense bullets would probably bounce off them right now. If Roman had a gun, he might even test it.

Then something changes; a shift in the air, in the mood, and Lars’s look goes from angry to anguished. Unclenching his fists, he rubs one hand over the whole of his face as if he’s trying to pull off a mask.

“Roman…” his voice comes from behind his palm, low and desperate, and Roman flees to his room before he can say any more; calls Annette and throws a few essentials into a bag. He’s done trying to catch people. There’s no fucking point. They’re always that intent on falling.

“I’m going to stay with Annette,” he says on his way out, to the slumped shape of Lars on the couch. “I want you gone by the time I come back.”

Lars looks up. His eyes are red, and he looks about ten years older than he is. Roman looks at him dispassionately and wonders how he ever found him handsome. Then he wonders how he himself looks right now: cold-eyed, hair unwashed, the dark bruise swelling the line of his jaw. Perhaps Jenny took more than the laughter and warmth when she left. Without her, it seems like there’s nothing lovely or gracious about either of them. Roman suddenly fiercely misses that: his own charm, independent of others. He used to have that.

Lars is reaching for him but not quite touching. There is an empty space that can’t be breached; it’s Jenny’s space, but Jenny’s gone and without her, they can’t seem to set this right. Jenny would scowl and say something acerbic and hurtful and just right, and somehow that would mend it. When Roman and Lars say hurtful things, they only leave gashes, raw and bleeding.

“Roman,” Lars says again, but there seem to be no words that would turn his name into a sentence, let alone a plea. Roman says nothing, and Lars doesn’t ask him to stay. There’s no pain, because there is no bond to break.

Somehow that’s the worst.


End file.
